Managed to get Neil Armstrong back on the moon for the good people of Google Earth, a whopping great illustrated biography available for download here. Minus a lot of the visuals, following are some excerpts.

In a world that hungers for heroes, he has been the genuine article many times over: a stoic jet fighter pilot who narrowly escaped death on a combat mission in Korea; a daring test pilot who soared in the experimental X-15; and the Apollo 11 commander who deftly guided the lunar module Eagle to a safe landing on the moon with only 20 seconds of fuel to spare.

Neil Alden Armstrong was born at about half past midnight on August 5, 1930, at his maternal grandparents’ house, the first child of Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. Neil is the Scottish form of the Gaelic Neall, meaning “cloud” and, in more recent usage, “champion”.

His father worked for the Ohio government, resulting in the family moving to 16 different towns around the state in the first 14 years of Neil’s life. In his St Mary’s backyard Neil Armstrong fell to earth. He was eight years old and scaling a huge silver maple tree when he chose the wrong branch and plummeted 15 feet, landing flat on his back. Though he was physically uninjured, the family always remembered the mishap.

The Armstrongs were living in Warren when Neil had first airplane ride, likely on July 26, 1936, just before his sixth birthday. It was in a Ford Trimotor, the 12-passenger “Tin Goose” that could cruise at 120 mph.

The family’s last move was to this house Wapakoneta in 1944. Jacob Zint had an observatory at his home nearby that loomed large in the Apollo 11 news coverage, but Armstrong insists it didn’t play as big a role in his formative years as Zint claimed. The Westinghouse engineer and amateur astronomer said Neil’s life took a crucial turn when he peered through Zint’s telescope at the moon during a 1946 visit with his Boy Scout troop.

Over many subsequent visits, Zint told the press, Neil steeled himself to realising his dream of reaching the moon. Armstrong had to burst the balloon in 2005: He was only at the observatory once, didn’t use the telescope and never discussed going to the moon with anyone — his aim at the time was merely to be a terrestrial pilot. Space flight was “unrealistic”.

In April 1966, just after Neil’s Gemini 8 mission, Blume High School, which Neil attended, hosted a gala community celebration in the gymnasium attended by the governor and 1,500 invitees. Neil handed out small framed US flags that had been in orbit with him. The party was of course dwarfed by Neil’s homecoming in 1969, when 60,000 visitors joined the population of 7,000 to see their hero in another parade, this one led by Bob Hope, a Cleveland native.

At age 16 Neil flew a plane himself for the first time, at Port Koneta airfield, which is now the Wapakoneta Neil Armstrong Airport. Much has been made of his learning to fly before he learned to drive a car, but Armstrong has pointed out that two of his classmates also earned their wings that summer of ‘46.

In 1947 Neil was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but was persuaded that he could get a quality education in aeronautics closer to home at Purdue University. His tuition was covered by the Holloway Plan, which required two years of study followed by three years in the Navy and then two more years toward a degree. During Navy training in California he earned a degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California.

At college he was a pledged by the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and among other activities wrote and co-directed Phi Delta’s student-revue musical. He also met home-economics major Janet Elizabeth Shearon, who would become his wife in 1956.

As part of his university arrangement Neil entered pilot training under the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor, at a time when huge advancements were being made in the field. He and several Purdue classmates signed on as Navy midshipmen at Navy Air Station Pensacola in February 1949. He earned “field qualified” status in an F8F Bearcat and the following month aced his carrier tests to become a full-fledged Navy Aviator. His mother and sister came to see him graduate on August 23.

In June 1951 Armstrong’s Fighter Squadron 51 received its orders and set sail on the USS Essex for NAS Barbers Point on Oahu. In Hawaii the F9F-2B Panthers were fitted with heavy bomb racks and the squadron designated for ground attack rather than the aerial combat with Russian-built MiGs the pilots had been anticipating.

Neil first saw action on August 29 while escorting a photo reconnaissance plane over the port of Songjin (Ch’ongjin). He flew routine combat air patrol over the fleet in the next few days as well as armed reconnaissance over other Korean cities, but remained safe even as his Air Group 5 suffered a rash of casualties.

In six months Armstrong flew 78 missions over Korea, earning the Air Medal for the first 20, a Gold Star for the next 20 and the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star.

On September 5 Armstrong was catapulted off the Essex for the 28th time in three months to fly armed reconnaissance over a valley road southwest of Wonsan. A comrade’s jet was caught in the heavy anti-aircraft fire and crashed, killing him, and then Neil, on a bombing approach, was also nailed and came so close to the ground before pulling up that he sheared off six feet of a wing on a ground cable. Clinging to control long enough to get out of enemy territory, he was forced to bail out over the sea.

Ensign Armstrong left the Navy in August 1952 and the following year became a Lieutenant junior grade in the Naval Reserve. He returned to his studies at Purdue, graduating in January 1955, and during that time few regularly with the Naval Reserve Aviation Squadron 742 at what was then NAS Glenview.

The next career that beckoned was as a test pilot. Armstrong had job offers from Douglas and TWA, where he could have been a production test pilot, but opted for experimental research.

First he married Janet Sheardon on January 28, 1956. They would have three children: Eric (Rick) Alan, born in 1957, Karen Anne in 1959 and Mark Stephen in 1963. Karen died in 1962 of pneumonia resulting from her physical condition being weakened by a brain tumour.

Armstrong was put straight into a cockpit on his arrival at Edwards Air Force Base. He went from piloting the planes that chased after experimental aircraft dropped from bombers to the B-29 Superfortresses themselves.

On March 22, 1956, he was in charge of dropping a Douglas Skyrocket D-558-2 from 30,000 feet when an engine died and the propeller began windmilling dangerously. They dropped to pick up speed so they could launch the rider just as the propeller disintegrated, firing shards into two other engines. They managed a slow, circling descent and safe landing on one engine.

The following month he flew an X-15 to 207,500 feet but kept the nose up too long and literally bounced off the atmosphere back up to 140,000 feet. When he finally came down he shot past the landing field at Mach 3, at more than 100,000 feet, and ended up 45 miles south of Edwards (not as far as the Rose Bowl, as some colleagues joked) before finally turning around history’s longest X-15 flight.

Armstrong’s other close call at Edwards AFB resulted in another legend of aviation, Chuck Yeager, deciding that “Neil was a pretty good engineer. He wasn’t too good an airplane driver.”

In April 1962 Armstrong and Yeager flew a T-33 Shooting Star to Smith Ranch Dry Lake, seen here, to check if it could be used as an emergency landing site for the X-15 following a heavy rain. Chuck claimed he warned Neil that the lakebed was too mucky for them to land, but Armstrong insisted on trying and got the wheels stuck. Neil said Yeager never advised him against a landing. It became a huge debate in later years.

On September 17 millions of viewers watching the CBS TV show “I’ve Got a Secret” broadcast live from what is now the Ed Sullivan Theater, marked here, first heard the name Neil Armstrong. The guests that evening trying to stump the celebrity panel were Neil’s parents, Viola and Stephen. The home audience was tipped off right at the start: Their secret was “Our son became an astronaut today.”

The day previous Armstrong had got the call from Deke Slayton and was promptly cloistered with his 32 fellow trainees at the Manned Spacecraft Center, then under construction outside Houston.

In 1959 NASA had been taken by surprise by the media frenzy that greeted its introduction of the the original seven Mercury astronauts at Washington’s Dolly Madison Hotel. This time the agency wasn’t caught short: The press conference to introduce the “New Nine” for the Gemini program was held here at Houston’s Cullen Auditorium on September 16, 1962, and as expected, the place was jammed.

Along with civilians Neil and Elliot See Jr, the press met Frank Borman, James McDivitt, Thomas Stafford and Edward White II of the Air Force and Charles Conrad, James Lovell and James Young from the Navy.

Continued in Part 2.